Should Artists Tell Labels to Pull Their Videos? YouTube Continues Ties With PewDiePie Even After “Death To All Jews” Video

Disney severs ties, but YouTube continues to host support and promote PewDiePie’s Videos on YouTube and the subscription YouTube Red service.

While much has been made of the Disney severing its relationship with YouTube star PewDiePie after his series of what most are calling anti-Semitic videos, few have said anything about the fact that YouTube seems to be standing strong with their biggest star PewDiePie. (Stock analysts take note, this is why YouTube will always be an also-ran when it comes to lucrative video advertising.)

YouTube continues to promote its YouTube red original content from PewDiePie. (UPDATE Screenshot was taken on Feb 14 2017 at 8:21 AM GMT, YouTube now claims to have “dropped” PewDiePie from YouTube, but this is clearly not true. This video and channel is still live, and still on YouTube Red Premium Subscription. ) While some are characterizing PewDiePie’s videos as tasteless and hurtful trolling, clearly the videos go well beyond that. But don’t just take my word for it, just ask Andrew Anglin at the American Nazi website The Daily Stormer. He declared the Daily Stormer “The worlds #1 PewDiePie fansite after PewDiePie’s series of anti-semetic videos (below).

I suppose everyone makes mistakes. But this isn’t a one time thing with YouTube. There is a pattern here. For nearly 4 years The Trichordist has been documenting YouTube’s Hate Rock/Nazi videos advertising problem. Imagine if VHI kept running anti-semitic and hate rock videos to sell advertising. Who would want to do business with them?

As artists we could be excused for being somewhat ambivalent when it seemed the problem was a “user generated hate” problem. But PewDiePie has a deal to produce exclusive content for YouTube! WTF? These videos were produced with the backing of Disney and YouTube. This is NOT UGC. At least Disney severed ties with PewDiePie. YouTube has not. This is simply inexcusable.

So why do labels and artist continue to support the YouTube platform? Individual artists can’t take down their videos down but labels can. Artists should tell their labels they don’t want to do business with a platform that hosts and monetizes anti-semitism and hate rock (Ed note: And ISIS recruitment videos!!).

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We’ve been on this for 4 years. No one in the music industry has been listening. Why? Are labels too scared to stand up to YouTube? Too scared to stand up to hate and anti-semitism? I urge all artists and labels to review our coverage: